“WHAT IS your MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)?” This recently overused conversation starter reveals our desire to understand ourselves. The MBTI test, designed in the 1940s by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, is a self-assessing personality tool that divides people into 16 psychological types. With the ongoing popularity of MBTI, the four-letter code has become a big part of one’s identity, especially in the younger generation. Despite its popularity, the test is an inaccurate, uncredible personality assessment, and its viral emergence represents an obstacle to the genuine understanding of human nature. 

Why are we obsessed with MBTI?

   It is not an exaggeration to say that the South Korean younger generation follow the MBTI test religiously. Everybody share their results, and social media accounts are receiving millions of likes through MBTI-related content. 
   Psychologists believe that the Generation MZ[1]’s obsession with the MBTI is an indirect result of the decreased social interactions and increased unemployment rate during the pandemic[2]. The unemployment led to fewer opportunities for people to prove themselves at work, while the decreased social interactions made them lose the sense of how to interact with others. In order to feel a sense of fitting into society, people choose to fill out these tests that categorize them into certain personality types.  
   Alternatively, other experts claim that the trend can be explained through some key values of the Generation MZ, such as the importance of making your own decisions[3]. In a world that gives an excessive number of options, it is easy for people to feel lost. In turn, people try to understand themselves better by taking the MBTI test, hoping it will help them make decisions quickly and easily.

The MBTI test is flawed

   The MBTI test design was mainly based on Carl Jung’s unsupported theory of personality, published in the 1920s. In his publication, Jung mentioned that “every individual is an exception to the rule,” suggesting people should not take such classifications too seriously[4]. 
   The outdated test lacks both accuracy and precision. Research showed that around 50% of people receive a different result the second time they take the test, with only a few weeks in between[5]. The inconsistency of the results is mostly due to its self-reporting nature, meaning that people can try to match the image that they want to show to others with their results, either consciously or unconsciously. In a reliable psychological assessment, objective and quantifiable indicators yield the same results when administered repetitively. Self-report assessments that lack objective indicators, like the MBTI test, are disregarded by contemporary psychologists.
   What is most concerning is that the MBTI test suggests a bimodal distribution of traits that implements the wrong perception of traits and human nature. The test tries to fit a person into one attribute or another in four categories: extraversion (E) – introversion (I), sensing (S) – intuition (N), thinking (T) – feeling (F), and judging (J) – perceiving (P). However, psychologists agree that people’s traits cannot be divided as this model suggests. For example, a study showed that there are no pure extroverts and introverts; people more often fall in between the spectrum, acting differently in varying social situations[6]. The dichotomies created by the test limit people’s ability to understand themselves and makes it easier to stigmatize one another. 
   On the contrary, other personality tests like the Big Five Personality Test are assessments more accepted by contemporary psychologists[7]. Unlike the MBTI test, the Big Five test measures the degrees and relative strengths of a person in five categories: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It also includes subcategories, providing a fuller understanding of a person's personality.

Stigmatizing certain MBTIs

   In the context of media’s portrayal of certain MBTIs such as INTP and ENTJ as uncooperative and inflexible to work with, companies, like Suhyup Bank and Our Home Ltd., now ask their applicants to write an essay discussing the pros and cons of their MBTIs. Some part-time jobs even prevent people with certain MBTIs from applying. Considering that the official MBTI organization warns employers to not use the tests to determine applicants’ capabilities and potential, the fact that companies are using MBTIs in their selection process is astounding.  
   The negative portrayals of particular MBTIs are evolving into personal concerns connected to issues of self-esteem, negatively affecting people who have a stigmatized MBTI result. How the MBTI trend started as an attempt to understand oneself but is now limiting the scope of fully understanding people is something sad and ironic. It is time for us move on from the narrow-mindedness of judging people by their MBTI. 

[1] Generation MZ: A term referring to both Millennials and Generation Z, people who were born between 1980 and 2010
[2] SBS News
[3] Chosun Ilbo
[4] Forbes
[5] Indiana Edu
[6] The New York Times
[7] Weekly Donga